The History of Turkey

The modern Republic of Turkey is the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic power in Europe between the late 14th and the early 20th centuries. The Republic of Turkey came into being after the overthrow of Sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin by the new Republican assembly of Turkey in 1922. The Ottoman Empire by the 19th century had sunk into a decline that led some to call it the "sick man of Europe." After the Empire's collapse following World War I, Turkish revolutionaries led by Mustafa Kemal Atat├╝rk emerged victorious in the Turkish War of Independence, establishing Turkey as it currently exists today. Atat├╝rk, then Prime Minister and later President of Turkey, implemented a series of reforms that modernized the country and moved it more towards European culture. During World War II, Turkey remained neutral until February 1945, when it joined the Allies. During the Cold War, Turkey allied itself with the United States, taking part in the Marshall Plan in 1947, joining as a member state the Council of Europe in 1949, and joining NATO in 1952.

Turkish nationalists established modern Turkey as an outcome of the Turkish War of Independence, mostly on what was to become Turkish territory, as of the Treaty of Lausanne. The war resulted in the defeat of Greece in western Turkey, the East Armenian state on the east, Britain, France, and Georgia. The Treaty of Lausanne, signed on July 24, 1923, and negotiated by ─░smet ─░n├Ân├╝ on behalf of the Ankara government, established most of the modern boundaries of the country; except the province of Hatay, formerly the Syrian province of Alexandretta, which joined Turkey following a referendum organized in 1939 after having gained its independence from France in 1938. The Treaty of Lausanne also led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey as the successor state of the defunct Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey was founded as a nation-state on the French Revolutionary model.
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The history of modern Turkey begins with the foundation of the republic on October 29, 1923, with Mustafa Kemal Atat├╝rk as its first president. The government was formed from the Ankara-based revolutionary group, led by Atat├╝rk. The second constitution was ratified by the Grand National Assembly on April 20, 1924. For about the next 10 years, the country saw a steady process of secular Westernization through Atat├╝rk's Reforms, which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law with a secular civil code modeled after Switzerland's and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code; recognition of the equality between the sexes and the granting of full political rights to women on 5 December 1934; the language reform initiated by the newly founded Turkish Language Association; replacement of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with the new Turkish alphabet derived from the Latin alphabet; the dress law which stated that the wearing of a fez, a traditional Muslim hat, was outlawed; the law on family names; and many others.

However, the first party to be established in the newly formed republic was Women's Party (Kad─▒nlar Halk F─▒rkas─▒). It was founded by Nezihe Muhiddin and several other women but was stopped from its activities, since at the time women were not yet legally allowed to engage in politics. The actual passage to multi-party period was first attempted with the Liberal Republican Party by Ali Fethi Okyar. However, the Liberal Republican Party was dissolved on 17 November 1930 and no further attempt for a multi-party democracy was made until 1945.

Turkey was admitted to the League of Nations in July 1932. Atat├╝rk's successor after his death on November 10, 1938 was ─░smet ─░n├Ân├╝. He started his term in the office as a respected figure of the Independence War but because of internal fights between power groups and external events like the World War which caused a lack of goods in the country, he lost some of his popularity and support. During World War II, Turkey signed a peace treaty with Germany and officially remained neutral until near the end of war.

In February 1945, Turkey declared war on Germany and Japan, although this was largely symbolic. On October 24, 1945 Turkey signed the United Nations Charter as one of the fifty original members. In 1946, ─░n├Ân├╝'s government organized multi-party elections, which were won by his party. He remained as the president of the country until 1950. He is still remembered as one of the key figures of Turkey.

The real multi-party period begins with the election of the Democratic Party. The government of Adnan Menderes was very popular at first, relaxing the restrictions on Islam and presiding over a booming economy. In the later half of the decade, however, the economy began to fail and the government introduced censorship laws limiting dissent. The government became plagued by high inflation and a massive debt. On May 27, 1960 General Cemal G├╝rsel led a military coup d'├ętat removing President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Menderes, the second of whom was executed. The system returned to civilian control in October 1961. The political system that emerged in the wake of the 1960 coup was a fractured one, producing a series of unstable government coalitions in parliament alternating between the Justice Party of S├╝leyman Demirel on the right and the Republican People's Party of ─░smet ─░n├Ân├╝ and B├╝lent Ecevit on the left. The army gave a memorandum warning the civilian government in 1971, leading to another coup which resulted in the fall of the Demirel government and the establishment of interim governments.

In 1974, under Prime Minister Ecevit in coalition with the religious National Salvation Party, Turkey carried out an invasion of Cyprus. The governments of National Front, a series of coalitions between rightist parties, followed as Ecevit was not able to remain in office despite ranking first in the elections. The fractured political scene and poor economy led to mounting violence between ultranationalists and communists in the streets of Turkey's cities. A military coup d'├ętat, headed by General Kenan Evren, took place in 1980. Within two years, the military returned the government to civilian hands, although retaining close control of the political scene. The political system came under one-party governance under Turgut ├ľzal's Motherland Party (ANAP), which combined a globally-oriented economic program with conservative social values.

Under ├ľzal, the economy boomed, converting towns like Gaziantep from small provincial capitals into mid-sized economic boomtowns. On the other hand, administrative reforms against terrorism were enacted by the government, which passed a state of emergency law in 1983 and established in 1985 village guards, local paramilitary militias, to struggle against the conflict with the PKK, an independantist Kurdish terrorist group. Starting in July 1987, the South-East was submitted to state of emergency legislation, a measure which lasted until November 2002. With the turn of the 1990s, political instability returned. The 1995 elections brought a short-lived coalition between Y─▒lmaz's ANAP and the True Path Party, now with Tansu ├çiller at the helm. In 1997, the military, citing his government's support for religious policies deemed dangerous to Turkey's secular nature, sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan requesting that he resign, which he did. This was named a postmodern coup. Shortly thereafter, the Welfare Party (RP) was banned and re-born as the Virtue Party (FP). A new government was formed by ANAP and Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) supported from the outside by the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP), led by Deniz Baykal. The DSP won big in the 1999 elections. Second place went to the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP). These two parties, alongside Y─▒lmaz's ANAP formed a government.

The government was somewhat effective, if not harmonious, bringing about much-needed economic reform, instituting human rights legislation, and bringing Turkey ever closer to the European Union. A series of economic shocks led to new elections in 2002, bringing into power the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) of former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdo─čan. AKP again won the 2007 elections, which followed the controversial August 2007 presidential election, during which AKP member Abdullah G├╝l was elected President during the third round. Recent developments in Iraq, secular and religious concerns, the intervention of the military in political issues, relations with the EU, the United States, and the Muslim world were the main issues. The outcome of this election, which brought the Turkish and Kurdish ethnic/nationalist parties (MHP and DTP) into the parliament, may well affect Turkey's bid for European Union membership, as Turkish perceptions of the current process, or their lack thereof, affected the results and will continue to affect policymaking in coming years.

Turkey's application to accede to the European Union was made on 14 April 1987. Turkey has been an associate member of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors since 1963. After the ten founding members, Turkey was one of the first countries to become a member of the Council of Europe in 1949, and was also a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1961 and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 1973. It has also been an associate member of the Western European Union since 1992. Turkey signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and was officially recognised as a candidate for full membership on 12 December 1999, at the Helsinki summit of the European Council. Negotiations were started on 3 October 2005, and the process is likely to take at least a decade to complete. The membership bid has become a major controversy of the ongoing enlargement of the European Union.

Turkey first applied for associate membership in the European Economic Community in 1959, and on 12 September 1963 signed the "Agreement Creating An Association Between The Republic of Turkey and the European Economic Community", also known as the Ankara Agreement. This agreement came into effect the following year on 12 December 1964. The Ankara Agreement sought to integrate Turkey into a customs union with the EEC whilst acknowledging the final goal of membership. In November 1970, a further protocol called the "Additional Protocol" established a timetable for the abolition of tariffs and quotas on goods traded between Turkey and the EEC.

1980 saw a temporary stop in relations as a result of the 1980 Turkish military coup following political and economic instability, though the recommencement of multiparty elections in 1983 saw Turkish-EEC relations fully restored. On 14 April 1987, Turkey submitted its application for formal membership into the European Community. The European Commission responded in December 1989 by confirming AnkaraÔÇÖs eventual membership but also by deferring the matter to more favorable times, citing TurkeyÔÇÖs economic and political situation, as well its poor relations with Greece and the conflict with Cyprus as creating an unfavorable environment with which to begin negotiations. This position was confirmed again in the Luxembourg European Council of 1997 in which accession talks were started with central and eastern European states and Cyprus, but not Turkey. During the 1990s, Turkey proceeded with a closer integration with the European Union by agreeing to a customs union in 1995. Moreover, the Helsinki European Council of 1999 proved a milestone as the EU recognised Turkey as a candidate on equal footing with other potential candidates.

The next significant step in Turkish-EU relations came with the December 2002 Copenhagen European Council. According to it, "the EU would open negotiations with Turkey 'without delay' if the European Council in December 2004, on the basis of a report and a recommendation from the Commission, decides that Turkey fulfills the Copenhagen political criteria."

With the 2002 election of the pro-European Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdo─čan, a number of reforms led to increasing stability both politically and economically. In 2004, as part of the drive to enter a reunified Cyprus into the EU, the Turkish government supported the UN-backed Annan Plan for Cyprus. This plan was accepted by Turkish Cypriots, but rejected by the Greek Cypriots. At the same time, a three-decade-long period of hyperinflation ended, with inflation reduced to 6% from annual levels of 75% during the mid-1990s.

The political reform program of the Erdo─čan government continued. This included the abolition of capital punishment, crackdown on torture, and more rights for its Kurdish population. In response to these developments, the European Commission recommended that the negotiations should begin in 2005, but also added various precautionary measures. The EU leaders agreed on 16 December 2004 to start accession negotiations with Turkey from 3 October 2005. Despite an offer from the Austrian People's Party and the German Christian Democratic Union of a privileged partnership status, a less than full membership, EU accession negotiations were officially launched.

Turkey's accession talks have since been dogged by a number of domestic and external problems. Several European states such as Austria have made their reluctance to allow Turkey into Europe clear. The issue of Cyprus continues to be a major obstacle to negotiations. European officials have commented on the slowdown in Turkish reforms which, combined with the Cyprus problem, has led the EUÔÇÖs enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn to warn of an impeding ÔÇśtrain crashÔÇÖ in negotiations with Turkey. Despite these setbacks, Turkey closed its first chapter of negotiations in June 2006.

The earliest date that Turkey could enter the EU is 2013, the date when the next financial perspectives (the EU's six year budgetary perspectives) will come into force. Ankara is currently aiming to comply with EU law by this date, but Brussels has refused to back 2013 as a deadline. It is believed that the accession process will take at least until 2021

Proponents of Turkey's membership argue that it's a key regional power with a large economy and the second largest military force of NATO that will enhance the EU's position as a global geostrategic player; given Turkey's geographic location and economic, political, cultural and historic ties in regions with large natural resources that are at the immediate vicinity of the EU's geopolitical sphere of influence; such as the East Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts, the Middle East, the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.

According to Carl Bildt, Swedish foreign minister, "The accession of Turkey would give the EU a decisive role for stability in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, which is clearly in the strategic interest of Europe." One of Turkey's key supporters for its bid to join the EU is the United Kingdom. In May 2008, Queen Elizabeth II said during a visit to Turkey, that "Turkey is uniquely positioned as a bridge between the East and West at a crucial time for the European Union and the world in general."

Upon joining the EU, Turkey's 70 million inhabitants would bestow it the second largest number of MEPs in the European Parliament. Demographic projections indicate that Turkey would surpass Germany in the number of seats by 2020.

Turkey's membership would also affect future enlargement plans, especially the number of nations seeking EU membership, grounds by which Val├ęry Giscard d'Estaing has opposed Turkey's admission. Giscard has suggested that it would lead to demands for accession by Morocco. Morocco's application is already rejected on geographic grounds, and Turkey, unlike Morocco, has territory in Europe. French President Nicolas Sarkozy (then a candidate) has stated in January 2007 that "enlarging Europe with no limit risks destroying European political union, and that I do not accept...I want to say that Europe must give itself borders, that not all countries have a vocation to become members of Europe, beginning with Turkey which has no place inside the European Union."

EU member states must unanimously agree on Turkey's membership for the Turkish accession to be successful. A number of nations can oppose it, notably Austria, which historically served as a bulwark for Christian Europe against the Ottoman Empire; and France, which is fearful of the prospect of another wave of Muslim immigrants, especially given the poor integration of its existing Muslim minority.

Attempts to change the French constitution to remove the compulsory referendum on all EU accessions after Croatia resulted in a new clause requiring compulsory referendums on the accession of all countries with a population of more than 5% of the EU's total population; this clause would apply to Turkey and Ukraine. The French Senate, however, blocked the change in the French constitution, in order to maintain good relations with Turkey.